BPW & Michael:
Here are some points that I hope will clarify my initial claims:
1) Here is a quotation from David Cook: _Illusion is the operative term
here...the continuity of movement and light that seems to be the most
palpable quality of the cinema exists only in our brains, making cinema
the first communications medium to be based upon psycho-perceptual
illusions created by machines_. Cook's argument roughly summarizes what
most textbooks imply in their discussion of film motion: the movement
exists solely in our brains, rather than in the world (or on the screen)
in front of us. The spectacle is an illusion propagated by the magic of
the human optical system.
2) Why insist that what we collectively agree we are seeing on the
screen is not actually there? And why insist that the world in motion
on screen exists _only in our brains_?--as if it could exist anywhere
else. Indeed, if it is true that we can make similar claims about
objects in the everyday world and objects on the screen (with respect to
relative speed, position, character and quality of action, and so
forth), then why cling to the scientific sidebar regarding illusory
motion? It is absurd to suggest, as Bordwell/Thompson and Cook do, that
the motion on screen is not _objectively real_, and that only our
_brain_ sees it as such. None of us has ever seen the thing we call a
chair, either (we only see examples of chairs, as Wittgenstein would
argue), though we have no trouble asserting that there are chairs in the
world. Textbooks would be better off describing the motion on screen as
provisionally real (provisional because projectors can be shut off),
rather than illusory.
3) It is true that the camera recreates movement for us; it is a tool,
as the word cinematography makes literally true, for recording
movement. But it is not clear that it recreates, records, or
re-presents the _illusion_ of movement; after all, tricks and illusions
don't actually occur, but the movement on screen occurs in every
intelligible sense of the word. The description of cinematic movement
becomes trivial and irrelevant because no one can watch a movie and deny
that movement takes place (on the other hand, actual illusions and
tricks can be found out and demystified).
4) The issue becomes even more puzzling when we speak of sound films.
Cook suggests that hearing voices recorded is not illusory; the voice is
materially _real_ even though it is the end result of a technical
process that transmits gradations of light into electrical impulses,
which in turn are amplified as sounds. But this would lead us to the
bizarre conclusion that sound films are visually illusory and aurally
(that is, heard) real. We can be tricked by what we see, but not by
what we hear. Quite a conundrum...
-Anthony Banks
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